Following a recent spate of hackings in Darkfall its time for an internet security reminder.

Passwords

There are 2 simple things you should do when using logins and passwords on the internet to make your life a lot more secure!

1) Use secure passwords - over 9 characters, a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. A good password should look like this: ?x,kRb2SCf$b or this P,1oxy-VK]dy. If your password is johnjohn69 you can kiss your pixels goodbye

2) Use unique passwords for every login - This is often the problem when people get hacked. Internet forums and webpages are not secure and they often get compromised, if your password is the same across the internet, one compromised forum or webpage can result in your entire online activity being compromised. NEVER USE THE SAME PASSWORD FOR YOUR FORUM ACCOUNT AND YOUR GAME ACCOUNT

General Internet Security Tips

1) Antivirus Software - Everyone should have an up to date antivirus software package installed. I would currently recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. Its free, unobstrusive and very highly regarded in the industry.

There are many other equally good antivirus options out there inluding AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, Comodo etc.

2) Update - Keep Windows and your Browser up to date with the latest versions. The majority of vulnerabilities and hacks are done on outdated software, keep your software up to date to avoid a lot of these problems. I would also strongly recommend upgrading to Windows 7 64 bit (for Darkfall)

3) Firewall - Make sure your windows firewall is turned on as a minimum. There are other more in depth solutions available if you want to get really techy, but not needed for the average internet user.

4) Warez/Cracks/Porn Sites etc - Be very careful when using the aforementioned types of sites, the majority of malicious software on the internet can be found on these types of sites. Download anything from these websites with extreme caution. Be extra careful when downloading game related software especially Bandicam, Fraps, Playclaw etc A lot of these cracked programs have keyloggers/trojans within them.

Overall just stay smart and remember nothing on the internet is a given. Dont click links from emails, dont open attachments if you are not 100% sure of their origin.

the most important part, hands down, is keeping your adobe products up to date. adobe reader and adobe flash can be found on almost every computer, which makes them very prominent targets for exploitation. always run the latest version of those. a good tool for keeping up with the latest is Secunia PSI ( http://secunia.com/products/consumer/PSI/ ), which will tell you about insecure versions of software on your machine.

as for the password reuse problem, i would suggest using KeePass2 ( http://keepass.info/ ) to keep tabs on all your passwords. there are ports availabe for most platforms and a firefox extension called KeeFox which provides seemless integration into that browser. if you have worked out a backup regime for your keepass file, you can even start using auto-generated long high-entropy passwords and just let the software do all the remembering.for those spots where you cant do that, i would like to point to https://www.xkcd.com/936/the take-away message is that you can use passwords that are easy to remember, if you just make them long enough. given that some types of (older) software may limit password length (or even silently use only the first x letters), you should take this with a grain of salt.

the reason why Silva suggests win7 64bit is that it requires drivers to be signed, which significantly raises the bar for malicious code to enter your system. this only works as long as you do not turn this feature off, obviously (your screen will have a note saying "test mode" in the lower right corner if you have this turned off, in case you were wondering).